when love became elusive
by vicious storm
Summary: "You can't just leave us." John's eyes soften, and he pulls away from his suitcase, lays a hand on Alex's shoulder. "I can't stay." / Sherlock pushes people away. John gives up, and Alex is caught in the aftermath. / Johnlock; part three of my "homes out of human beings" verse


**AN: Aha! Yay! Number three is finished! Which you can thank Terr-Bear for, because she actually did force me to write this. I was just going to not for a long while, but noooooooo, it had to be written today. (Fuck you, Terri.)**

**Part four, ****_as quiet as a closed mouth_****, might and might not be up very soon. Because I'm a lazy fuck, and also because I'm leaving for camp on Monday and won't get back until Friday, and then the following week I start prepping for a kid's camp I'm helping host, and then the week after is the actual kid's camp. So all camp stuff won't wrap up until early July, and I don't know when I'll be able to write.**

**Disclaimer: Not mine—both series belong to their respective creators.**

**_kisses, _**

**_halestorm_**

* * *

Alex notices when he gets out of the shower, attempting to towel dry his hair and knot his tie at the same time. The stillness of the flat.

When he steps into the living room, it's just Sherlock, screeching away at his violin. Alex rolls his eyes.

"Mum, are you and Dad fighting again?" he asks, his voice dripping in sarcasm. "Please, Mum. Tell me you're not getting divorced."

Sherlock glares, throwing down his violin. "We can't very well get divorced if we're not married. Go to school, Alex."

Alex hesitates. "Are you sure you're okay? If John left instead of sticking around to yell at you…"

Sherlock sniffs, picking up the violin again. "He had to work."

Alex bites his lip, staring at the distressed older man. "Is there anything—"

"You're going to be late," Sherlock snaps. "Go to school already, Alex. I don't have time for this."

* * *

When Alex gets home from school, John is home, but Sherlock isn't. "Where's—" Alex starts, but John cuts him off.

"Case," he says shortly, briefly glancing up from his newspaper.

Alex hangs in the doorway, biting his lip. "Are you still mad at him?"

John snorts, flicking the page. "He's an arse."

"A pain in _your _arse, maybe," Alex teases, and John rolls his eyes. Alex drops his backpack to the floor, crossing the room to curl up in Sherlock's chair across from John. "Why are you mad at him, exactly?"

John's jaw clicks slightly, before he finally puts the newspaper away and stares at Alex. "He came home _high _last night," John says after a moment. "_High_, even though he told me he quit doing drugs."

Alex arches a brow. "He seemed fine this morning."

"After I forced water and food into him?" John retorts, face twisting up in anger. "I can't _believe _he had the audacity to shoot up like that, and for a _case_, of all things! And to just expect me to not get upset about it—" He cuts himself off, deflating.

"I don't know what I'm still doing here," John murmurs, more to himself than Alex. Alex's stomach drops. "I need a few days away from him."

"My uncle used to do the same thing," Alex says, after a moment of hesitation. "Do something stupid for his job. I didn't know about it very often, because I didn't know what he did until I was older, but I remember he came home so drunk one time that he tried to force himself on Jack." Alex smiles bitterly at the memory. "She set him straight, of course. The next morning, she told him if he ever came home that drunk again, she'd personally castrate him. He never did come home drunk again."

John arches a brow. "He had to drink for his job?"

"Yeah. I mean, Sherlock had to shoot up for his." Alex shrugs. "Comes with the business, I guess."

"And was your uncle also a consulting detective?" John asks, his voice laced with bitterness.

"Close enough," Alex says, and pushes himself to his feet. "I don't know. Give Sherlock a chance to explain, or something. Don't just pack up and leave for the weekend because you're angry. Last time you did that, you were obnoxiously loud when you came back and had makeup sex."

"Alex!" John exclaims, but Alex is already halfway out of the room, snickering as he grabs his backpack and makes his way into his own bedroom.

* * *

Alex knows when Sherlock comes home, because that's when the yelling starts. He waits for an hour and a half, expecting it to fizzle out into a series of moans that Alex pretends not to hear, but it never does. Eventually, the sound of a slamming door fills the air, and there's just silence.

Alex makes his way into John and Sherlock's bedroom, but it's just John inside, a suitcase open on the bed as John tosses his clothes into it.

The scene is so achingly reminiscent of the last time Alex's uncle left (the time he never came back) that Alex almost throws up.

"So you are leaving for the weekend, then?" Alex forces out, leaning against the doorframe.

John breathes out a harsh sigh, glancing at Alex, then at his bag, then at Alex again. "I don't know. The weekend, maybe longer. I don't know when I'll come back." He pauses, his breath ragged, and tosses one of his jumpers towards the suitcase. "I don't know if I'll ever come back."

Alex's breath stutters on its way out. "_What_?" he exclaims. "You can't just _leave_ us."

John's eyes soften, and he pulls away from his suitcase, lays a hand on Alex's shoulder. "I can't stay. Not right now."

Panic wells up inside of Alex—John is really leaving, and Alex doesn't know if he'll ever come back. "He needs you!" Alex snaps. "I mean, we—_I _need you. We both do."

John stares at him, his breathing quickening just slightly, his lips pursing, eyes shining. "I'm sorry, Alex. I'm so sorry."

And then he's gone. He just packs up and leaves. Just like everyone else.

Alex throws up a little while later, and by the time Sherlock comes home, Alex has already found one of his stashes of cigarettes, and a bottle of John's beer. Sherlock doesn't reprimand Alex, or say anything at all. He just sits down beside him on the couch and lights up his own cigarette.

* * *

John calls Alex on Mrs. Hudson's line two days later, but when their landlady comes into the flat offering Alex the phone, he shakes his head.

He's not ready to talk to someone who found it so easy to abandon him.

* * *

Alex comes home from school after two weeks of John being gone and finds Sherlock high on the couch, and he knows he needs John. Putting aside his own wounds, he doesn't know how to handle Sherlock—he needs John for this. They both need John.

He calls Mycroft from Mrs. Hudson's phone.

"He's staying with his sister, Harry," Mycroft says when he picks up—no formalities or anything. Alex doesn't get a word out before Mycroft is speaking, prattling off Harry's address.

"Thanks," Alex says after a moment, closing his eyes and leaning back against the wall.

Mycroft doesn't reply. He hangs up, and Alex thinks the Holmes brothers could do with a few etiquette lessons.

_I'll mention it to John when he comes home_, Alex thinks, and chortles at the thought of Mycroft and Sherlock sitting in a class, learning how to be polite.

* * *

Alex rings the bell at Harry's house, stepping back and waiting. His stomach twists up funny—he doesn't want to ask John to come back if John doesn't care enough to stay with them, but Alex can't handle Sherlock on his own. And in all honesty, he misses John, too. John is as much his family as Ian ever was.

A short, blond woman with too-dark plum lipstick answers the door, looking harried despite her prim up-do and the nice suit. Which, Alex can't help but notice, falls over her curves in all the right places. (So he's a teenage boy. Sue him.)

"What do you want?" she snaps out, sliding a similarly plum-colored shoe on her panty-hosed foot, hanging onto the doorknob to keep herself from falling over. "If you're selling something, I'm not interested."

Alex arches a brow. "I've got nothing to sell you except the idea that maybe plum is too dark for your complexion." He shrugs. "I'm just here to see John, actually."

She makes a face. "Oi, you must be the sarcastic brat he adopted. Fine, go on in, he's in the kitchen." And then, both heels on her feet and her feet firmly on the ground, she turns and storms down the hallway, hips swaying slightly, like she's used to being watched. Alex only shakes his head and sets off in search of the kitchen.

The kitchen, as it turns out, is located just off the hallway, and it's smaller, homier but still crisp and somehow prestigious, and for a minute, Alex pictures the blond woman hosting dinner parties in this room, sipping expensive wine and eating Italian food made by chefs native to Venice, talking about modern, abstract art. Or maybe something older, like Leonardo da Vinci. Alex shakes his head, clearing the images, and focuses on John, who sits at the counter and pokes at his takeout with a fork as he flips the page of the book on the counter before him (Alex recognizes the book as the one he'd given John for Christmas, and warmth spreads to his toes, even though John would have been just as likely to read the book if someone he hates had given it to him instead of Alex).

"Who was at the door?" John asks around a mouthful of what looks like curry, not looking up from his book.

"Just me," Alex says, and unwinds Sherlock's scarf from his neck and shucks his pea coat as John jolts, looking up at Alex, his gaze startled. Alex doesn't say anything else, just sets his things on the table and sidles up to the counter and sits on the barstool next to John's, confiscating his fork and trying the curry for himself.

"Alex," John says after a long moment. "How'd you—"

"Mycroft," Alex interrupts before John can finish, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.

John stares at him, and Alex lifts a brow in a challenge, chewing the curry slowly. He's come a long way since that first day in Sherlock's flat, more used to eating on a regular basis and not hurrying to get his fill because he doesn't know when his next meal will be. He has John to thank for that, too, and he hates how reliant upon John and Sherlock he's let himself become.

"You could have just called," John says after another long moment, annoyance and probably affection seeping into his voice. "I left Harry's number with Mrs. Hudson."

"That would have been a very John thing to do," Alex agrees, "but I've been stuck with Sherlock for two weeks, so I'm a bit more inclined to do the Sherlock thing than the John thing."

John laughs, and then he leans over and pulls Alex into a crushing hug, and the fork drops from Alex's fingers, clattering onto the counter, and then Alex is hugging him back, and there might or might not be tears stinging at the corners of his eyes as he presses his face into John's shoulder, his fingers curling into the back of John's jumper, and he hisses, "Come home, please," and John's voice is soft and comforting as he answers, "Okay."

"Are you finally leaving, then?" the blond woman asks, and Alex starts, jerking away from John and wiping his eyes inconspicuously as he turns to face the woman standing in the doorway, a small, rueful smile pulling at the corners of her lips.

"Yeah," John manages, and he's smiling, but Alex thinks that he, too, might be on the brink of tears. "I'll pack after dinner."

"Good," the woman says, a hint of exasperation in her tone as she walks past them into the main part of the kitchen, ruffling John's hair with her fingers as she passes. She's talking to Alex as she says over her shoulder, "He's been moping around here for weeks, scared to go back to you because you didn't answer the first time he called. Like you being upset with him for leaving means you were never going to take him back."

Alex shrugs. "John's an idiot."

"Alex," John sighs, shaking his head, but the woman snorts, withdrawing a wine glass from the cabinet.

"No, he's right," she says. "I like him." She turns to Alex. "Harry Watson, at your service."

Alex shakes her proffered hand and says, "Alex Rider, at yours."

"What, haven't changed it to Watson or Holmes yet?" she asks, arching a brow. "What are you waiting for, the wedding?"

John blushes. "Harry," he says, and he's using that voice that he uses when he's angry at Sherlock but doesn't want to argue in front of Alex.

"He hasn't actually adopted me," Alex says for him. "It's probably for the better. When I die, John and Sherlock will find out through Mycroft, because Mycroft is the only person who knows my connection to them."

Harry tilts her head to the side, pouring wine into her glass (expensive wine, just like Alex thought it would be). "Why would you die before John and Holmes?"

Alex doesn't say anything at first, but then he just shrugs. "I'm pretty accident prone. You should see my hospital records."

It's only half the truth, and he can tell that John knows. But John doesn't say anything, just lets it slide. And he keeps letting it slide, as he grabs his bag from upstairs (already packed like he was waiting for Alex to come get him), as he hails a taxi, as he follows Alex back into 221B, as he wards off Mrs. Hudson's cheerful "Oh, good, you're back, dear!", as he bites nervously at his lip when he finally sets eyes on Sherlock.

"I'm sorry," is out of John's mouth before Sherlock fully registers that he's back, and then John is on top of him, more or less, pressing him back into the couch and smothering him with his mouth.

Alex only shakes his head and makes towards his bedroom, and he can hear John's apologies for leaving and Sherlock's for scaring him off well into the night.

* * *

John doesn't bring it up for another week, after he and Sherlock have thoroughly made up and are back on the same basis (John following Sherlock on cases and picking up shifts at the hospital when money is tight).

When he does, it's over dinner at Angelo's.

"When are you going to tell us who you are?" John asks outright, cutting into his ravioli.

Alex knows what he means right away, and Sherlock catches on quickly enough. Alex considers for a long moment, and then gives up. There's no point in keeping anything from them anymore.

"I'm the world's only teenage spy," he says finally. He takes a thoughtful bite out of his pizza. "Well, former, I guess."

John scowls. "I want the truth, Alex. Not another of your sarcastic remarks."

And okay, Jack always _did_ say that Alex's sarcasm was going to bite him on the arse one day.


End file.
